How can I print out all possible letter combinations a given phone number can represent?

Question

I just tried for my first programming interview and one of the questions was to write a program that given a 7 digit telephone number, could print all possible combinations

Answer 1

Scala solution:

def mnemonics(phoneNum: String, dict: IndexedSeq[String]): Iterable[String] = {
  def mnemonics(d: Int, prefix: String): Seq[String] = {
    if (d >= phoneNum.length) {
      Seq(prefix)
    } else {
      for {
        ch <- dict(phoneNum.charAt(d).asDigit)
        num <- mnemonics(d + 1, s"$prefix$ch")
      } yield num
    }
  }

  mnemonics(0, "")
}

Assuming each digit maps to at most 4 characters, the number of recursive calls T satisfy the inequality T(n) <= 4T(n-1), which is of the order 4^n.